1951-52 Westerners recall place in history

And for the most part, each decision the 64-year-old Brewer makes harkens back to boyhood days spent on practice fields around Lubbock where he constructed a lifelong framework for success.

Brewer was a two-year starting quarterback at Lubbock High in 1950 and '51. As a senior he played a major role in the Westerners' Class 4A state championship run and earned All-State honors. LHS also won the 4A state crown in 1952, and those two clubs are considered by many to be the best two teams in city history.

Brewer's memories of his days at LHS are still vivid today. And still very useful.

"What I accomplished in football has had a great deal to do with what I've accomplished since then," Brewer said. "The same things that you learn back then go into making you successful at whatever you do organization, planning, hard work and routines. Those are some of the best memories I have, and they're also experiences that played a large role in shaping my life."

The back-to-back state title runs played a major role in the lives of most of the players involved, and most of those men remain steadfast friends to this day. So much so that men in their mid-60s who are either retired or preparing for it still refer to their former football peers as Jimmy or Mikey or Donny.

"I can tell when I'm around an old Westerner because they still call me Jimmy," said 1954 graduate Jimmy Welch, an All-State fullback on the '52 state title team. "In all my years in business, people usually called me James or Mr. Welch, but those guys still know me as Jimmy."

Most of those men also know how special it was to be a Westerner in those days. For two seasons, LHS didn't lose, and both years culminated with victories over bigger and highly-favored Baytown in the state championship games: 14-12 in 1951, and 12-7 in '52.

Charles Northington gains some yardage before he runs into Baytown's All-State fullback Devin Lounsberry in the 1951 state championship game.

It wasn't as if those LHS teams were groundbreakers. The 1939 Westerners nabbed the school's first state football crown a year after losing in the 1938 battle for the crown. In the spring of '51, the LHS basketball team also claimed a state championship.

But the two state football championships in the '50s came at a special time in Lubbock and in America. World War II was over and life was starting to return to normal. Many players including Brewer lost brothers and fathers to war, and football had emerged as an important outlet.

The addition of Monterey, Coronado and Estacado were still several years away, leaving the Westerners and Texas Tech as the main games in town. In fact, as many of those players are proud to point out, LHS consistently outdrew the Red Raiders at the Jones Stadium gate.

Playing Westerner football in the early '50s meant playing for legendary coach Pat Pattison. And it was a time when Lubbock wasn't counted among the state's athletic powers.

Lubbock High end coach Pat Harris, left, head coach Pat Pattison, and line coach Bill Floyd, right, are all smiles after they return to Lubbock after the Westerners defeated El Paso Ysleta 40-21 in a 1951 bi-district playoff game.

"That was an era when Lubbock wasn't thought of real highly by people around the state, especially in the big cities," Welch said. "For us, football was the one thing in our life that we could look forward to. We worked real hard to bring ourselves to the level of teams like Amarillo and Wichita Falls, and it was vindicating when we came out on top of everybody else."

The Westerners prevailed by using Pattison's innovative offense and a rag-tag bunch of undersized players who simply refused to lose. Both teams went 13-0 to claim their titles, and the 1952 club stretched the winning streak to 29 games a number that remained a state record for many years.

"Coach Pattison was as close to a genius as anyone I have ever worked with," said Pat Farris, an LHS assistant during the consecutive state title years and the coach who took over when Pattison left for Vernon in 1954. "The offense we used in 1951 and '52 was the same one the (NFL) started using in 1978. He was that far ahead of his time."

Pattison had also had a heady and spirited group of players at his disposal. The 1951 team did not include a player over 196 pounds, and Pattison's offense was all based on a fullback dive coincidentally both teams had All-State fullbacks in James Sides (1951) and Welch ('52).

Fullback Jimmy Welch (46) picks up 15 yards on a goal-line rush against Midland during the 1952 season. Blocking for him are Jimmy Gafford (74), Buddy Hill (43) and Mike Brady.

Unlike most offenses of the day which followed rigid play-calling and rarely allowed for audibles, the Westerner offense was triggered by tackles who were instructed to check the defense at the line of scrimmage and use voice signals to dictate who would get the ball and where the play would go.

"When we took the field against those guys from Baytown, they must've looked at us and figured they could handle us because they came out with real wide spacing on their line," Welch said. "Instead of running the plays they expected us to, we used those signals and just ran all over the field on them. They didn't catch on until the second half, and by then we'd changed what we were doing. We ran them so ragged that we never got to our normal game plan, so we never even had to throw the ball."

Every player has similar vivid memories of that season, particularly the two Saturdays when they won state titles at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. Each time between 15,000-17,000 LHS fans flocked to Dallas to witness the Westerners claim their piece of Texas history.

Charles Northington, a starting halfback in 1951, said he didn't know until afterward that the '51 state title game was played in bitter cold.

"We didn't notice because we were out there having fun," Northington said. "The fans told us later that it had been pretty cold but it didn't seem to bother them either. I didn't give a second thought to losing because we just always felt like we were going to win."

Dick Lowrey, a guard who was one of the handful of players who started for both state title teams, can still recall games from both seasons like they were yesterday.

He recalled a game against Oklahoma City Capitol Hill in 1951 in which the Westerners trailed for the first and only time all season. Lowrey said the Redskins were bigger, stronger and quicker than LHS, but by the end of the third quarter, the Westerners had worn down their visitors.

"We just relied on hard work, good morals and team work to beat people," Lowrey said. "We never outsized or outmuscled anyone we played. We just found a way to win."

The 1951 and '52 teams won state championships after two Westerner clubs with as much or more talent couldn't. Brewer said the 1949 LHS club had a much better group of players than either of the state champions. Likewise, Brewer's injury late in the 1950 season might have cost that crew a chance at a state crown.

But the teams that did win had something special, an intangible. Brewer knew it then and has come to cherish even more the special bond those teams shared.

"We all knew each other from playing together for so long when we were growing up," said Brewer, who was one of seven Westerners who went on to play at the University of Texas. "We had a group of feisty guys who loved to play football and who wanted to win badly because we played for coach Pattison."

Over the years the players on the two state title teams have scattered.

Brewer spent most of the last 48 years building a highly successful career as a bank executive in the Dallas area. Welch became a powerful player for several American steel companies before retiring to New Mexico recently. John Blocker went into coaching and is now retired in Pflugerville. Tommy Cadenhead and Don Jones live in the Metroplex and occasionally get together with Brewer.

A handful of players, including Lowrey and Northington, are still in Lubbock.

But the bond remains and, in fact, may be even stronger now. Many of those players convened in Dallas last year when Brewer and Pattison, who died in 1981, were inducted into the Texas High School Football Hall of Fame.

"That meant a lot to me to see so many guys out in the audience," Brewer said. "That was such a great honor anyway, but it was even more meaningful to go in with Coach Pat. I basically just tagged along."